REALIZATION-Over the course of numberous debates and countless discussions with Christians, I have found that the prevailing reason for their acceptance of God's existence is the belief from "personal experience." Many of the conversations go something like this: Me, "well why do you believe Jesus is God?" Them, "I have had so many things happen in my life, I cannot deny the fact that it must be God." Me, "do you believe that these events could be coincidence?" Them, "No, nothing will ever change my belief in God because I have had these experiences." And understandably so, this begs my next question. Me, "well what are some of those experiences and why does it have to be the Christian God that did this for you?" Predominantly, I receive some strange and very vague responses such as the following: "The love that Jesus has shown me is undeniable." "My life has been blessed so greatly." "Jesus has answered so many of my prayers, He exists." And finally, another popular response is, "Um, let me think...." Evidently some experiences aren't that memorable after all. Anyways, it's always bewildering to me how low the bar is set on most people's "miracle gauge." However, it's certainly a wonderful thing when we get what we want in this life, but what I would like to look at for a moment is this: what is self-fulfillment?
It's a matter of fact that human beings have a much better probability of achieving or attaining something when setting a goal. For instance, when a person says to themselves that they want a particular job, a process is set into motion that pushes our likelihood of landing the job into a positive, forward-moving direction. Simply put, when a target is set, the odds that you hit the target increase. This brings me to self-fulfilling prophecy. Many people, through seeing the end-results of certain situations, credit supernatural explanations for something that can be naturally explained by something as simple as our behavior. This "self-talk" leads us to actually behave differently, therefore producing results. It works both ways though, such as telling yourself over and over that you are going to fail will often produce the result of failing the specific objective. However, what I am speaking of is the positive type of the self-fulfillment and the relationship between personal goals and the Christian's "God experience." There are three questions I like to ask when it pertains to purported "miracles":
1. Did you want this to happen?
2. Did you think it would happen?
3. Why did it happen? (If it did indeed happen.)
If the answer is yes to the first two questions, then why could the third answer not reasonably be explained by a causal effect from the first two that was ignited by the God "placebo-effect?" Is it not conceivable that the answer to the question of "why we got what we wanted" cannot simply be the fact that "we got it because we wanted it in the first place and we took action because we believed that it could happen?" Many people are quick to credit God for the result when in all reality, our behavior and forced movement toward achieving the goal is the reason why we actually accomplished it.
The new version of the movie Sherlock Holmes is a superb example of how humans are very hasty in making rash assumptions that events are supernatural when, in all reality, there is a perfectly plausible scientific explanation for the events that transpired.
On a slightly different note that pertains to uncontrollable events, I have personally had instances in life where I have been tempted to attribute a miracle to an important life event that in all actuality, had very good statistical odds of happening in the first place. One example is that my daughter was born prematurely at 32 weeks. Things couldn't have went better for her, and now she is a healthy two and a half year old girl. It was a pivotal time in my life, and I prayed for her. Of course it was a critical situation, and any premature birth should be, but the statistical odds of her surviving was over 90 percent. Now could it at all be possible that God actually had nothing to do with the fact that she survived and that sheer probability played in my favor? I am very grateful that life has given me the chance to be a father, but to unknowingly, blindly accredit an invisible, complex God is rather presumptuous. It is also intellectually dishonest to claim that you have substantial evidence that out of the thousands of gods invented in the history of mankind, your god happens to be the one, true deity and everyone else is mistakenly believing in their "experiences" from their God. Why is it so easy for religion A to discredit religion B's miracles yet everyone is supposed to believe in religion A's miracles? And while we're on the subject, what about these "visions", "voices", "miracles", and "experiences" that people of other religions have had? As in the case of Islam, Muhammad had "revelations" that he honestly believed were visions from God. Many other people from opposing religions also have had personal experiences that reveal to them the supposed truth yet many of them contradict one another. Would an all-powerful, all-knowing creator really send conflicting, confusing messages or would a mind's ability to delude itself be a better explanation? Every denomination's local pastor is telling us that "God told me this" and we should believe him/her and not the other denomination's preacher even though their pastor says "No, God told ME this." Maybe our mind is more powerful than we give can even imagine, and humans have the natural tendency to attribute coincidence to the supernatural. Epileptic seizures can be attributed to the cause of "prophetic visions" where sufferers profess that God spoke to them, but that certainly doesn't make their experiences a universal truth that we should all lay our lives down for, and I think everyone can agree about that much.
To conclude this, when a person says to me that they simply cannot deny the existence of God because He answered their prayer to save their dying grandmother of cancer, it holds no empirical weight with me when their grandmother was receiving chemotherapy treatment. Many apologists say this is God's way of answering the prayer, but do you believe that God denied the prayers of millions of people that died before chemotherapy treatment was invented and still thousands that receive treatment today simply because "the technology wasn't there yet" or that "God's ways are mysterious to man?" I suppose the reason God won't acquesce to the prayers of millions of starving Africans that need only rain to spring their crops to life is because of their sinful ways?
3 comments:
Part 1 of 3:
Since your post is somewhat long winded (and I’m not being critical of that!), let me try to summarize and respond to the first of two major points you have made. And please, I consider you a friend, so don’t misinterpret the tone of my response. You say – “I have found that the prevailing reason for their [Christian’s] acceptance of God's existence is the belief from "personal experience." You then proceed to be critical of a Christian’s personal experience of God in their life, claiming that there is a “perfectly plausible scientific explanation” or that they can be “naturally explained”, that it is a “self-fulfilling prophecy” or that there are “very good statistical odds of [it] happening in the first place”. Forgive me, but this sounds a bit like someone trying to justify the fact that they’ve not had those experiences.
Think about this. The reason for ALL of our beliefs is personal experience, including yours, so this is not an unreasonable thing to do as you are doing it yourself! Why does a naturalistic explanation trump a supernatural one? Just because there is a natural “explanation” (anything can be “explained”), doesn’t mean it happened that way or that it can be proven to have happened that way.
At least a dozen perfectly reasonable scientific calculations have been done regarding the probability of Abiogenesis occurring which can easily be researched. They all conclude the statistical probability of life forming from non life is essentially ZERO (in addition to the fact that it breaks several scientific laws). Yet, you irrationally accept that it occurred (correct me if I’m wrong) and hypocritically want us to accept that God does not exist (or is not part of our personal experiences) because you say the “probability” or “statistical odds” of a natural explanation is much greater. So in other words, you want us to replace something we believe based on reliable eye-witness accounts with something an atheist has made up that has a statistical probability of Zero!!! It is always bewildering to me how low the bar is set on many people’s “gullibility gauge”.
Part 2 of 3:
MY personal experience is that most people I know are simply unwilling to discuss what they believe in regards to religion or politics. I strongly suspect that this is because they have thought very little about it or aren’t even sure what they believe. I cannot fault them for this since no one can do the research necessary to investigate everything one believes. In those cases, you form an opinion based on your already presupposed worldview (whether it be materialistic or supernatural). Therefore, you are always going to interpret evidence based on what you already believe. You are being critical of Christians for doing this, yet you are guilty of the same thing (regardless of whether you are willing to admit it).
There are a myriad of reasons and significant evidence to believe in the Christian God. In addition, because we are his creation, He has placed a desire to know and obey Him within all of us. Your “conscience” is a manifestation of this. His influence in people’s lives and the relationship people have with Him simply CONFIRMS what they already know in their hearts from the evidence that they see all around them… evidence you refuse to see because of your worldview.
Of course, you are no doubt generalizing and/or stereotyping why you think Christians believe what they do. There are lots of people in this world and every one of them has had different experiences. I have not had the same conversations with Christians that you have had. However, I have found that people do not always articulately express the reasons for their beliefs, so it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions. I can only tell you the reasons for my own beliefs. Besides the obvious scientific and logical evidence, I have also experienced many spiritual events in my own life. I was on crutches after a skiing accident and my knee was healed instantly by Jesus when the pastor of a small church I attended prayed and placed his hands on me. What is the statistical probability of that? What is the statistical probability that a man pronounced dead was raised 90 minutes later by Christ through the prayers of a righteous man (see the book 90 minutes in heaven)? How do you naturally explain away the resurrection of Jesus Christ Himself?
Part 3 of 3:
Yet the miraculous “mundane” is also a testament to Christ. God upholds the entire universe with consistent laws and properties that make science and the reliability of our senses possible in the first place. The incredible complexity of the universe and even the simplest life is an obvious testament to His vast creative powers. Christ said “without me, ye can do nothing”. God deserves the credit for ANY good things that occur regardless of how miraculous or non-miraculous they might seem. That is not to say that He hasn’t imbued mankind with great creative powers themselves since they have been created in His image. But who is to say when our own spirit leaves off and His begins? Many times I have prayed which has resulted in some “miraculous” insight. What “materialistic” explanation do you have for non-material creative thought? How did the non-material “evolve” from the material?
And because God’s existence is a fact and because He is our creator, He is deserving of our devotion and obedience even when things go terribly wrong. You are mistaken if you think the majority of Christians believe in God simply because He has done good things for them. Consider the case of Job, if you are familiar with the story. I’ll address the comparison of Christians with other religions (your second major point) in another post.
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